When I was in Italy over the summer I had lemon pasta for the first time and was in heaven. You see, lemons are one of my most favorite fruits. I use them probably everyday, but I never had it in a pasta before! YUM! A lovely brightness to add to your winter meal…

Last week we discovered GreenChef Chloe on VegNews and we posted her 4th of July dessert video. This week, we bring you her Vegan Avocado Pesto Pasta video (recipe link). This is a pretty simple and quick recipe, even I could imagine whipping this one up for dinner or lunch. Which means, I will be making this for sure in the next few days. If the recipes are too complicated, I tend to wait for a visiting greenchef to make them for me. I know, I am a very spoiled dark monkie.

Enjoy the video… and go checkout VegNews Magazine, they gave us an award a few years back. Best site to read at night, or something like that. No, I don’t know what that means either. Maybe we are too dark to be read during the day. Also, take a few minutes to see more recipes by Chef Chloe on her site, chefchloeblog.weebly.com

I am in Cali, where the farmers market is booming with an abundant variety of amazing tomatoes. And, because of that, I always always seem to buy more than I can eat cause they all look so beautiful!!! So, if I don’t eat my luscious ripe tomatoes right away, I put them in the fridge to stay fresh but…ummmm…note to self: don’t forget about them!!! Huh. I know. My beautiful boxes of ripe golden red cherry tomatoes got pushed to the back of the fridge where I couldn’t see them clearly. Oh and I also found a bag of hot red chili’s from the farmer market too…hmmm….what to make…what to make…ohhhh, I know… a spicy Arrabiata Pasta sauce!!!!

Since coming back to the states from my Italian food adventures, I have been completely inspired to cook many incredible Italian dishes I experienced. Ahem…let me be specific…my newfound love for PASTA!!! Whole grain pasta, that is. I made the homemade pasta we learned at The Awaiting Table cooking school but it didn’t come out as perfectly as it did when we made it there, in Italy. Maybe it has something to do the all those wonderful minerals in the water…who knows…hopefully one of these days I will perfect it. It’s not that mine tasted bad, it’s just that it came out a bit thicker and chewier…in the meantime I am joyfully exploring the world of organic dry Italian pasta. Right now, I’m diggin’ Rustichella d’Abruzzo rigate di farro. It’s made from 100% farro flour, which is an unhybridized form of wheat that closely resembles spelt so any of you wheat sensitive peeps should find this ancient grain A-OK.

It’s a glorious end of summer kind of day with that wee bit of crispness of Fall in the gentle breeze, perfecto for an outdoor Italian pasta lunch! Yes, I was thinking the same thing; a special “friend” and some Italian wine is a must too! Either way, enjoy yaself!!! Ciao ciao….

About the photos, I know… I should have taken photos before we started eating. Next time I promise.

I am not a raw foodist, vegan or any one thing, but I have to say, preparing raw recipes is definitely one of my most favorite things to do in my kitchen! For me, raw recipes seem to be especially easy to make and nearly impossible to ruin. Well, not fatally at least. For example this Raw Jerusalem Artichoke Pasta was planned a little bit differently than you see it here in this post. My original idea was to make a raw version of a traditional pasta with a basic italian tomato red sauce. Which should have been easy, right? But unfortunately, when I finished making the sauce, and tasted it, I was a bit shocked. Something important was definitely missing, the flavor! Yeah, not good. I think the problem started with the tomatoes I used. I live here in Bulgaria and the super markets are completely out of stock of local in season tomatoes and the only veggies on the shelves seem come from far far away. Maybe picked before they had a chance to ripen. Whatever happen to them, the result wasn’t a good one. They are completely dull and for the most part, tasteless. They reminded me a little of wet paper. Not very exciting.

They are completely dull and for the most part, tasteless.

This means I had to improvise and come up with a new sauce on the spot. I had already prepared my Jerusalem Artichoke pasta, and now I just need to sauce it. I know what your thinking, I should do a Pesto. So was I, but for some reason that too sounded a bit boring to me. Thats when I decided to wing it and came up with my own creation. We will call this new sauce, Nadia’s Mixed Winter Green Sauce. The recipe is below. I used a little chicory, radicchio, spinach, arugula and little olive oil with salt. Mmmmmm

Sicilian Pasta with Eggplant, Basil and Soy Cheese. This classic meal tastes great in any season. We were happy to use our own eggplants from the garden, just rather sad that we don’t have more, but looking forward to next spring when we begin again to grow this wonderful vegetable.